Stu - I have real problem with you insisting the religion (god) and people are separate. The reality is that without people there would be no churches, bibles, priests etc - ie no evidence of religion, which would mean no religion. The two are fundamentally linked. And maybe this is the problem.

Inspired by God and written by man. There is a huge difference but I think this will part of the dabate will go no where.

Religion is a human construct based on belief. The construct of Christianity has evolved and speciated. So you're saying that Christianity has not been diluted by the various sects and species? Dude, in the middle ages you had sects killing one another because one sect believed Christ was a pauper and other believed Christ owned material goods.

Again I belive that Jesus was the Son of God so it was not a human construct but revealed through him.
I don't deny that people are idiots, you have completely missed the points in my previous posts.
You were originally arguing that study beyond the bible to prove religion would lead to the dilution of a religion, this is what I was refering to.

It's not limiting or incorrect at all - by proving the design you would have to prove evidence of the designer, or it would be a logicalfallacy. And you wouldn't be able to prove design without designer, because without evidence of a designer it would be nothing more than happenstance. Do you agree?

No, lets simplify things:
A river dams up. The cause: a large pile of wood. At first glance it looks like a random pile of branches and twigs after the recent storm.
Upon closer inspection it's revealed that certain branches are positioned in key positions as reinforcement, etc, etc.
While this does not prove it was Mt Beaver, it offers the design which does rule out random creation.

Something a little more complicated:
\"Skeptics like to say that fine tuning cannot be proven by science, since we have only one universe to study. However, the discovery and quantification of dark energy has puzzled a number of scientists, who realize that its extremely small value requires that the initial conditions of the universe must have been extremely fine tuned in order that even matter would exist in our universe. By chance, our universe would have been expected to consist of merely some thermal radiation.\"

Guy, but religion is different from god, while religion is more closely linked to people wouldn't you say?

Einstein said it best, \"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one\", or something like that.

Arno: Please go and read about science. I cannot 'prove' evolution right. I can also not 'prove' the theory of gravity....

No, lets simplify things:
A river dams up. The cause: a large pile of wood. At first glance it looks like a random pile of branches and twigs after the recent storm.
Upon closer inspection it's revealed that certain branches are positioned in key positions as reinforcement, etc, etc.
While this does not prove it was Mt Beaver, it offers the design which does rule out random creation.

no it doesn't prove its mr beaver. but design implies purposeful intent by an entity - a designer......... whose to say it isn't Slartibartfast and his chums? Pt is intelligent design isn't a testable scientific theory. not the design part not the designer part

Some pts by Hume (this debate aint new.... it was happening in the 18th century...):

For the design argument to be feasible, it must be true that order and purpose are observed only when they result from design. But order is observed regularly, resulting from presumably mindless processes like snowflake or crystal generation.
If a well-ordered natural world requires a special designer, then God's mind (being so well-ordered) also requires a special designer. And then this designer would likewise need a designer, and so on ad infinitum. We could respond by resting content with an inexplicably self-ordered divine mind; but then why not rest content with an inexplicably self-ordered natural world?
Furthermore, the design argument is based on an incomplete analogy: because of our experience with objects, we can recognise human-designed ones, comparing for example a pile of stones and a brick wall. But in order to point to a designed Universe, we would need to have an experience of a range of different universes. As we only experience one, the analogy cannot be applied.

ps this is fun - I've got to revisit Humes theories, brush up on my understanding the philosophy of science and avoid work

The same then applies to Archeology (where the creator is humans), right?
Some would argue that intelligent design could be a valid theory but with the divided beliefs within Christianity, those would have to be united to form a effective model, but is it really that important whether it confroms to scientific theory in the strictest sense.
Sometimes to start out with all you have to go on is a reasonable amount of evidence and where you go from there is up to you.

I'm still convinced as the tools of science improves over time, there will be enough \"evidence\" to prove one or the other.

Stu wrote:
You were originally arguing that study beyond the bible to prove religion would lead to the dilution of a religion, this is what I was refering to.

No, I wasn't. I was arguing that trying to justify things in the bible scientifically (i.e. "We know it wasn't really 7 days, it's just a handy timescale") is dilution.

Stu wrote:
While this does not prove it was Mt Beaver, it offers the design which does rule out random creation.

Precisely - it means there was a designer. I never said you had to know what it was, just that there was one. If you prove the design, you prove that there was a designer. You just made my point.

Stu wrote:
Something a little more complicated:
"Skeptics like to say that fine tuning cannot be proven by science, since we have only one universe to study. However, the discovery and quantification of dark energy has puzzled a number of scientists, who realize that its extremely small value requires that the initial conditions of the universe must have been extremely fine tuned in order that even matter would exist in our universe. By chance, our universe would have been expected to consist of merely some thermal radiation."

It's that chance thing. It is entirely probably that there were probably millions of 'almost' universes.

Stu wrote:
Guy, but religion is different from god, while religion is more closely linked to people wouldn't you say?

No, I wasn't. I was arguing that trying to justify things in the bible scientifically (i.e. \"We know it wasn't really 7 days, it's just a handy timescale\") is dilution.

Dom are you just not reading my posts?
Read my post on page 3, the bottom line is that the first couple of lines are open to interpretation because unlike the rest of the bible which is well detailed, \"the beginning\" simply tells us:

Read the following otherwise you'll miss my point.
\"1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
1:3 Then God said, \"Let there be light\"; and there was light.\"

...and continues on.

Now check out the first line. This could mean that God created the heavens (stars, planets, space, etc.), including earth, and then got to work on earth itself, line 3. However this could also be interpreted in another way. While it could be considered dilution, it is one of the few parts of the bible that is not entirely understood, or require more infomation to be understood.

It's that chance thing. It is entirely probably that there were probably millions of 'almost' universes.

We'll agree to disagree as it all hinges on how you in interpret the facts evidence, proof, whatever.

I think this debate might be reaching an end though as it seems to be going in circles and has reached the point where we are arguing beliefs and not the evidence. I use the word beliefs because you are arguing no more facts than I am.

I'll leave you with my impressions of naturalism though:

1000 years down the line people come across an old pentium 2 computer. An argument ensues as to how it was assembled: The motherboard, CPU, HDD, etc. was all thrown into a machine rotating at high speeds and left in there until all the componenets were fixed into the correct positions, then that skeleton was spun around and a coating of aluminium was sprayed around that skeleton until it looked good?

or:

A company is looking to assemble a jumbo jet so instead of using labour they leave all the pieces in an area frequently hit blizzards and hurricanes and simply wait for all the pieces to be assmebled in the correct order? Instant jumbo jet.

Since neither creation nor evolution can be proved, they are both theories, or beliefs. In order to choose which belief to support, an examination of the anecdotal evidence supporting each belief is helpful. A belief in God is difficult for people because of the many fantastic (in the original sense) accounts contained in the bible. Many of the biblical accounts are rejected outright as ridiculous mainly because those who reject them do not rigorously attempt to provide feasible explanations for them. For example:

Of course, the great flood etc happened. And every animal on earth is a descendant of the pairs that Noah managed to fit on his (immensely) huge ark.

This explanation comes from the geoscience research institute, which is a group of christian research scientists:

The ark was designed to include only terrestrial vertebrates — those that walk on the ground and breathe through nostrils (Genesis 7:22). This does not include marine animals, worms, insects, or plants. There are fewer than 350 living families of terrestrial vertebrates. Most of these would be the size of a house cat or smaller. If each taxonomic family was represented on the ark by one pair, with the few clean families represented by seven pairs, the ark may have needed to contain fewer than 1000 individuals. The ark could probably accommodate ten times this number.

fundaddy wrote:Since neither creation nor evolution can be proved, they are both theories, or beliefs. In order to choose which belief to support, an examination of the anecdotal evidence supporting each belief is helpful.

You haven't read anything we've said in this thread if you believe that. Creationism is not a theory, as it cannot be verified and there is no evidence for it. There is evidence for evolution (even Christians tend not to argue with what they call microevolution). Theories and beliefs are two entirely different things.

fundaddy wrote:
This explanation comes from the geoscience research institute, which is a group of christian research scientists:

The ark was designed to include only terrestrial vertebrates — those that walk on the ground and breathe through nostrils (Genesis 7:22). This does not include marine animals, worms, insects, or plants. There are fewer than 350 living families of terrestrial vertebrates. Most of these would be the size of a house cat or smaller. If each taxonomic family was represented on the ark by one pair, with the few clean families represented by seven pairs, the ark may have needed to contain fewer than 1000 individuals. The ark could probably accommodate ten times this number.

There may be 350 families that conform to that definition at the moment, but within these families there are many more species. Many, many more. Of course, if you took a pair of each family, that would mean that the earth had been repopulated by 1 breeding pair of each family. So what then explains said speciation?

Evolution

Dude, that theory has so many holes in it, it could be my bouldering mat.

Sh1t, Stu, you talk the biggest load of bible-hugging crap I have ever heard! Dude, you are so indoctrinated by your so called beliefs that you'll say anything to prove your point, just like any other fool who has imaginary friends who help you find your lost car keys. Face it man, when you die it is going to be infinite, dreamless sleep. The bible is the biggest fable of all time and while some historical events match up, this is all far from proof of anything. It's all heresay and you're trying to convince yourself here.

It's a no brainer, evolution exists.

And those people bitching about the nature of this topic, who'd rather talk about climbing, don't visit this post. Nobody is forcing you, except maybe your God!

Find a chat room guys, this is just using up server space! Not to mention boring the pants off us everyday unelightened types!

Hahahahaha, server space. Dude, if you uploaded one of your lame photos it would take up more space that 10 of these posts.
Go and badly bolt a route.

Cheryl had it right. Science is about making an objective hypothesis based purely on available facts. As more evidence becomes available, we can either modify,reject or continue to accept our original hypothesis. Intelligent design is not objective, since the proponents are driven by a need to prove an existence of \"god\". Kent Hovind (american televangelist fraudster) was scheduled to give a talk on intelligent design in CPT, but because of legal troubles (O_o) his passport was confiscated. You can read about this guy on wikipedia.

It seems religion conveniently adjusts its stance on scientific matters depending on the situation. When the catholic church had the power to oppress and persecute, scientists were put under house arrest (galileo) and branded as heretics. When the church no longer had that power, it tried to recruit people to argue for its cause.

The greeks were mathematicians and philosophers, not scientists. The romans were engineers not scientists.

Can people know f-all about physics please stop talking about quantum mechanics? Reading popular science books by Stephen Hawking does not make one an expert in the field. Maybe you should try varying a Lagrangian to get the equations of motion for a classical system before you start commenting on a theory that is less than a hundred years old.

gluon wrote:
Can people know f-all about physics please stop talking about quantum mechanics? Reading popular science books by Stephen Hawking does not make one an expert in the field. Maybe you should try varying a Lagrangian to get the equations of motion for a classical system before you start commenting on a theory that is less than a hundred years old.

Hey gluon... could also translate the above as thus:

Can people who know f-all about God please stop talking about religion? Reading the Bible does not make one an expert in the field. Maybe you should try using your common sense before you start commenting on one family's history that is less than five thousand years old. (Which is only an incredibly tiny percentage of the age of earth, let alone the rest of the universe)

Just came across these threats and man did I miss out on some really interesting debates.

There has been much debate and confusion related to scientific method and many people before me have already explained this pretty well, but I do still find it interesting that religion feels it can/need to use science to proof the existence of God (and there is a certain desperation in this process), but in the same breath feels that the general rules of scientific method do not apply to them and that leaps of faith is allowed. This might be true in religion, but in science this cannot be. Religion in general is also not very adept at having to explain itself, this because for 2000 years one simply burned/killed/hanged people who dare to speak differently and in the absence of these kind of options there is a desperate clutching for straws.

Creationism (or the politically correct term “Intelligent Design ID”) have been mentioned a couple of times as proof of God (the confidence this is offered as proof is a pretty interesting conversation all in itself). We are often bombarded with all kinds of metaphors and examples, supposedly proofing intelligent design. Examples would be the supposed comment by Fred Hoyle that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance of a hurricane, sweeping through a scrap yard would have to assemble a Boeing 747, or the old example, that complicated organs (i.e. eyes) can impossibly have been created by evolution. Obviously this is a bigger discussion, but this is offered as proof that 1) Evolution is flawed and already proven wrong, 2) that God exist, fascinating…

This clearly shows a completely ignorance of scientific method and evolution, or in fact it might show a very clear understand of group psychology. Thousands of “believers” are wavering in their faith and all they need is a cleverly worded explanation, which has been the long standing tradition with all difficult questions of faith (a believer’s duty then is not to ask questions, and I STRONGLY disagree that religion encourages questions). The fact that the explanations do not fulfill ANY of the requirements of a sounds scientific theory and are fatally flawed does not matter, because the people it is aimed at do not care.

1) Evolution is flawed and already proven wrong. One could write books about this but in short this is absolute crap. Evolution in one of the best understood and studied theories in Science today. It forms the basis of almost all of biological sciences and so DOES explain many of the questions in science, which will otherwise have to be explained in terms of supernatural occurrences. Now firstly looking at the examples given above, this shows a clearly that there is NO understanding of how evolution works. Evolution does not say that creating an eye (the 747 methaphor) happens in a single step, the probability of this will indeed be irreducibly complex (a creationist term referring to intelligent design). It does not happen like that and it is through thousands (millions) of steps before you eventually have an eye exist, half a eye will indeed be useless. In order to make the statement that evolution has been disproved, you will have to come up with a scientific explanation showing this! ID is not a scientific explanation and therefore does not disprove Evolution, it is only prove in the light of blind faith, which is not scientific at all! This is of course the right of every person, but I will state again if you want to play in the world of science (i.e. disprove a particular hypothesis), then you have to stick to its rules.

2) Evolution is flawed and therefore this proves intelligent design and hence God exist. Essentially if a scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, the creationist draws a default conclusion: ‘Right then, the alternative theory, intelligent design wins by default. Notice the bias logic if theory A fails then theory B must be true (what if theory B states that the Easter Bunny did it). Needless to say the argument is not applied the otherway around. For this exact reason creationist aggravate around topics which can still not be explained by science. Scientists on the otherhand normally are not prone to flights of fancy and prefer to wait for evidence rather than make leaps of logic. The well known scientist Carl Sagan, who played an integral role in the search of intelligence

Last edited by Sunny on Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Needless to say the argument is not applied the otherway around. For this exact reason creationist aggravate around topics which can still not be explained by science. Scientists on the otherhand normally are not prone to flights of fancy and prefer to wait for evidence rather than make leaps of logic. The well known scientist Carl Sagan, who played an integral role in the search of intelligence elsewhere in the universe, was asked by a reporter whether there was intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, he refused to commit himself. When pressed for a “gut feeling” he replied: “But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in”
Essentially most scientist will seriously rethink their believe systems if real evidence of a higher power is given, or even anything scientific proving acts like faith healing, miracles and so forth. Personal accounts, althought interesting simply do not represent any real evidence.

Comments like Darwin (or anyone else believing in evolution) sleeping with Apes, is not only sad and childish, but shows an extreme level of ignorance in Science and evolution specifically, which is why flawed theories of intelligent designs seems like such a attractive option.

As far as contradiction in the bible is concerned, Genesis is not the only book of contention, it is merely the first book. The bible in its whole is full of extremely doubtful facts and contradictions and can not even be used as an accurate source of history. Going into specifics here will be needless, but even most Christians will not deny this to be true to some extent. But as I was taught in Sunday school when asking questions we need to remember “that man is not infallible and do make mistakes” and here I thought the bible is the word of God written through man. Does this mean that God is also fallible?

Another point I found interesting is the extreme joy prominent scientist are listed under the faithful, and this need to act as further proof… Why? Earlier in the forum I saw Einstein was listed in this group, this is untrue. It is easy to quote someone out of context and in Einstein case this has been done often, below is another quote from Einstein:

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the undbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it”

I cannot resist to include one last quote from one of my favorite authors Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, where we meet the robotic electronic Monk, a labour saving device that you buy to do your believing for you. The de luxe model is advertised as “Capable of believing things they wouldn’t believe in Salt Lake City”

Last edited by Sunny on Sun Oct 29, 2006 12:00 am, edited 4 times in total.

A good read for people enjoying this discussion (besides The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins) would be \"The Grand Inquisitor\" - Fyodor Dostoevsky. This is a 20 page chapter in \"The Brothers Karamozov\" but is often read outside the context of the book.